Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/670

646 present to the senses? (b) why do we suppose them to have an existence distinct from the mind and perception? 'the notion of external existence when taken for something specifically different from our perceptions' is absurd, 188 (cf. 66 f.) The sense can never give rise to the opinion of a continued and distinct existence. 189-193; nor the reason: therefore Imagination must be the source, 193; it is only to certain perceptions we attribute continued existence, 192, and we do so not because of their involuntariness and vivacity but because of their peculiar constancy ar: coherence, 194-197; confusing coherence with continuance, 198. and constancy or resemblance at different times with identity, 199-204; supporting this by the further supposition of distinct existance, 205; a supposition which does not imply any contradiction to the nature of the mind and which we believe, 209; though it is contrary to the plainest experience, 210.

B. To avoid this 'difficulty philosophers distinguish between perceptions and objects, which view retains all the difficulties of the vulgar view, together with some peculiar to itself, 211-213; it ascribes the interruption to perceptions, the continuance to objects. 215; 'tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or our senses-either to accept or reject the continued and distinct existence of perceptions, that is, of body, 218.

C. Our idea of a body admitted to be nothing but a collation of sensible qualities which we find constantly united, and this compound we regard as simple and identical, though its composition contradicts its simplicity and its variation its identity, 219; to avoid these contradictions imagination has feigned an unknown, invisible, and unintelligible something called substance or matter, 220; but 'every quality being a distinct thing from another, may be conceived to exist apart, and may exist apart, not only from every other quality, but from that unintelligible chimera of a substance,' 222; 'the whole system is entirely incomprehensible, and yet is derived from principles as natural as any of those above-explained,' 222.

§ 2. The modern philosophy by its distinction between primary. and secondary qualities, instead of explaining the operations of external objects annihilates them and reduces us to the most extravagant scepticism concerning them, 228; if colours, sounds, etc., be merely perceptions, there remains nothing which can afford us a just and consistent idea of body, 229 (cf. 192); there is no impression from which the idea of body can be derived—not touch, 'for though bodies are felt by means of their solidity, yet the feeling is quite a different thing from the solidity, and they have not the least resemblance to each other,' 230; there is a direct opposition between arguments from cause and effect and arguments which persuade us of the continued and independent existence of body, 231 (cf. 266.)